No Blood No Foul

The phrase No Blood, No Foul insinuates that as long as violence does not leave a mark, it is not prosecutable. It has been used in streetball, Camp Nama, torture, and medical malpractice.

The phrase “No Blood, No Foul” is commonly used in Streetball. Streetball is a version of Basketball played in the streets. It typically has fewer rules, no referee, and is generally rougher than basketball. "Within the context of sport, aggressive acts are often viewed as instrumentally useful to the initiator and are consequently likely to be valued". In regular basketball, the National Basketball Association defines a foul by saying, “A player shall not hold, push, charge into, impede the progress of an opponent by extending a hand, forearm, leg or knee or by bending the body into a position that is not normal. Contact that results in the re-routing of an opponent is a foul which must be called immediately”. In Streetball, pushing and shoving is acceptable provided no serious damage (typically drawing blood) is done. Hence the phrase “No Blood, No Foul”.

In Camp Nama a sign was posted that read, “No Blood, No Foul: The High Five Paintball Club”. “One Defense Department specialist recalled seeing pink blotches on detainees' clothing as well as red welts on their bodies, marks he learned later were inflicted by soldiers who used detainees as targets and called themselves the High Five Paintball Club”. The phrase “No Blood, No Foul” grew to sum up the entire camp as it was posted around the camp and torture chambers. An official of the Defense Department explained the slogan by saying,” [it] reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." or in other words “torture that leaves no scars is hard to prove”.

Much of the recent history of the “No Blood, No Foul” policy was shaped by the so-called Torture Memos (also called the Bybee-Yoo memorandum). The Torture Memos were written in the wake of the attack on 9/11. They detail approved interrogation techniques by evaluating proposed techniques in terms of International Statutes. They give approval to techniques such as walling (shoving a prisoner into a false flexible wall in order to disorient them), sleep deprivation, putting an benign insect in the prisoners box while telling them it is a stinging insect, the use of stress positions, and water boarding. They are evaluated to be legal and not constitute torture because they do not cause severe physical or mental pain or suffering (Bybee). "The Bybee Memorandum which was widely used as a legal basis for far-reaching interrogation methods explicitly authorized against terrorist suspects, concluded by stating that 'even if an interrogation method might violate Section 2340A, necessity or self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability". Because of these memos it has been said that the “No Blood, No Foul” policy evolved from the White House and Pentagon, “‘No blood, no foul,’ [was] the punch line that the Defense Department drew from the Bybee-Yoo memorandum”.

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Wikipedia